


what might have been and what has come to pass

by leiascully



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 19:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Angels knew something of mercy.  As long as Amy and Rory were together, everything would be all right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what might have been and what has come to pass

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-"The Angels Take Manhattan"  
> A/N: I took liberties with old New York (read: I didn't do a whole lot of research), so I'm sorry if anything hurts in anyone's degree. This story is made up of all my Pond feelings and my ugly crying and it incorporates Amy and Rory's son from the deleted scene. Sometimes you just have to let those feelings out. Title from "Long Ago And Far Away" by James Taylor.  
> Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

The angels knew something about mercy after all: Amy stumbled out of the graveyard in 2012 back into the chilly April of 1938 and there was Rory, slumped against the nearest wall, his face in his hands. She choked out his name and he looked up. His face was wet with tears but his eyes lit up when he saw her. She flung herself into his arms, both of them sobbing until their bodies shook. Amy held on until her arms ached; Rory was the one real thing and she was never going to let him go. She had to, eventually, but only to wrap her arms around herself. She'd cried herself out until she was shivering. Rory kissed her forehead.

"So," he said. "Here we are."

"Together," she said firmly. "The way it ought to be."

He smiled at her, his mouth crooked. She kissed the corner of it, trying to lift the weight of the worry that dragged at every new line on his face. 

"Hey," she said, stepping on his toe. "We'll be all right."

"Sure," Rory said. "Why wouldn't we be? Stranded in the 1930s. World War II just around the corner. No microwaves, no internet, no proper identification."

"We've done worse," she said. "At least there's electricity. And those cars - cool or what?"

He sighed and leaned against her. "Definitely cool."

It was dark and drizzly, not very pleasant. The pavement gleamed under the lights. Rory reached for Amy's hand and caught it between his. His fingers were warm around hers, which ached with the cold.

"Hey," he said. "What's in your hand?"

She looked down and saw that her fingers were clenched. Rory cupped her fist in his palm and carefully unbent her fingers one by one. Crumpled in her fist was a piece of paper, the ink slightly smeared but the words still legible. 

"There's a flat," it said, and gave an address. "It's in Brooklyn. I left the key with the girl in 6A. Go to Jacobson for papers - he'll set you to rights. There's enough money in the bank to get you set up properly. The bank card is in the flat. I'll be seeing you."

The scrawled signature read "Melody xx". Amy sniffled and twitched her hand away so that her tears didn't fall on the paper.

"Our little girl," she said. "She's looking out for us."

"Yeah," Rory said, mystified warmth in his voice. "That's still so weird. But good. But weird. Good old River. Do you think she knew all along?"

"Time can be rewritten, yeah?" Amy said. "I think she made it up as she went."

"She's really something else," Rory said, leaning against Amy.

"Of course she is," Amy said. "She's our daughter. A Pond through and through." She kissed Rory's cheek and sighed. "Wish she'd slipped me a couple of dollars. We could at least have gotten a taxi."

Rory dug for his wallet. "Think they'd take a one pound note? How did I even end up with a one pound note? I imagine it's because I've got a Scottish wife, but when exactly it made its way into my wallet remains a mystery."

"Nevermind," Amy said. "We'll walk. It can't be that far."

As it turned out, it was farther than she'd expected, but eventually they found the right building. They stumbled up the stairs and got the key from the neighbor, just as River had promised. It was a nice enough little flat. The furnishings were fairly comfortable and the lights all came on without flickering, which was a comfort after the day they'd had. Amy prowled through the rooms - living room, bedroom, practically closet-size spare room, bathroom, kitchen - and then threw herself down on the sofa. 

"Home sweet home," she said.

"No microwave," Rory teased. "How will you cook?"

She slapped at him playfully and craned her head. "There's a toaster and a kettle. That's all we really need."

He shook his head and nudged at her until she moved enough for him to sit on the sofa. He pulled her head onto his lap. "You're all I really need," he told her.

"Back at you, Centurion," she said. "So. This is still better than the time with the dung heap."

"Or the time the Doctor took us on a short cut that nearly got us sucked into a black hole," Rory reminded her.

"Or," she said, starting to laugh, "the time the entire universe nearly ceased to exist."

"Which time?" Rory asked wryly. 

"At least this time it's only us," Amy giggled, tearing up. "Sorry. Sorry! I don't know why I'm doing this."

Rory stroked her hair. "I know the feeling." He sniffled and sighed. 

"No hybrid cars," Amy said. "No frozen pizza. No internet. No Starbucks, for god's sake."

"No cell phone service," Rory said. "On the other hand, no one to call."

Amy sat bolt upright. "Yes, we have. Oh, god, we need to call your dad and my parents right now." She pulled out her cell phone. 

"I can't believe I forgot about that," Rory said, smacking his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Idiot, Rory. Ten years with the Doctor and you forget about universal roaming."

"I don't have much battery," Amy said, "but at least we can tell them." Her voice and her hands trembled. She put in Brian's number and handed the phone to Rory. He waited, tapping his fingers on the arm of the sofa. 

"Voicemail," he said after a minute. "Hello, Dad? It's me, Rory. Uh, we'll be gone a bit longer than we expected, so if you could keep watering the plants? Thanks. I'll talk to you later. Love you." He handed the phone back to her, his face crumpled in an expression of amused, despairing exhaustion. 

"Keep watering the plants?" Amy said.

"Didn't seem like something I could say over the phone," Rory said. "P.S. We're never coming back because we're trapped in a timey-wimey paradox I created by killing myself and then stupidly managing to sort of die again straight away and even if we manage to leave we'll be hunted down and sent back by the Weeping Angels, who you never want to meet in your life, so if you could keep watering the plants forever, that'd be great."

"Bit much for a voicemail, yeah," Amy said.

Rory sighed. "Maybe I'll write him a letter. Try your parents?"

Amy dialed and held the phone to her ear. It made its burring noise and she waited, half-holding her breath.

"Hello?" her mother said.

"Mum!" Amy said. 

"Amy?" Her mother sounded confused. Static crackled over the line and Amy strained to hear. "I thought you were on holiday. You never call when you're on holiday."

"We are," Amy said. "Sort of. We might not be back for a while."

"Well, that's all right," her mother said, syllables dropping out here and there. "Enjoy yourselves."

"Mum, we're stuck," Amy said, and then the call dropped. She tried to ring back, but the call wouldn't go through. She gave up after a few minutes. The battery icon was lower than she would have liked, but not dead yet. Maybe another day she'd get through. She turned the phone off and dropped it in her lap.

"Well," Rory said. "There's that."

Amy laughed, but it turned into a hiccuping half-sob. Rory pulled her close and she leaned against him. They sat there listening to the strange noises of 1930s New York: cars, but not the right ones; people, but with those New York accents and that old-timey cadence to their speech. It was all just a little bit off, and Amy couldn't even imagine how it would feel when the shock of it wore off and the reality actually set in. 

"Let's go to bed," she said wearily. "I'm knackered."

"Me too," Rory said. "I'm too tired to eat."

"Now I know we're in it," Amy joked half-heartedly. 

"Who's first to try the bathroom?" Rory asked.

"It can't be that bad," Amy said. "At least I saw hot and cold taps. We can have a bath."

Rory groaned. "A bath sounds like heaven." 

They gathered themselves up and ran a tub full of hot water, climbing in together in a tangle of arms and legs. Amy twisted her hair up out of her face as the steam rose around them. Rory kissed the nape of her neck and soaped her back. The soap smelled funny, but his hands were good. They soaked in the comfort of the bath, warming themselves all through. There were towels, rough but functional, and clothes in the bedroom. Amy slid her hands through the piles of clean clothing. She could tell they'd been worn; a few pieces still smelled like the perfume River had been wearing. It was a comfort that they were River's clothes, not quite Amy's size or style, but something to wear in her exile that connected her to her family. Rory could get away with his jeans until he found a shop, but she would stand out like a sore thumb in twenty-first century hipster chic. She put on a nightgown that was cut considerably lower than she usually wore. The fabric clung softly to her skin. 

"Do you think she wore this to, you know, tempt the Doctor?" she asked, striking a silly pose. 

"Please let's not talk about it," Rory said, dragging on his t-shirt and boxers for lack of anything else to wear. "It's bad enough that it's the Doctor, and it's worse that she's our daughter. I don't know why, since she's clearly enjoying all of it, but it does make it worse. Besides, paradox, remember? Bloody great snarls in the fabric of time, or something? He'd never manage to make their date."

"True," Amy conceded. She climbed into bed and snuggled close to Rory. The mattress was harder than she liked, no lovely memory foam pad or pillows, but at least the sheets smelled clean and nothing was too lumpy. Rory put his arm around her.

"Rory," she whispered. "We'll be all right?"

His arm tightened around her. "Of course we will. I've lived through 1938 once, and we won't even have to do the Blitz this time."

"And I'm not in a box, so that's good," she said.

"Better than good," Rory said drowsily. "Everything I could ask for."

"Shut up," she said quietly, and kissed him. She tucked her head against his chest and drifted off to sleep.

\+ + + +

The first day was the easiest, Amy thought. It was like camping in the past. It was funny how much old New York was like the new New York they'd left, though she missed the Starbucks on every corner. The cashier at the bank was suspicious but gave them some money - it was a bit startling to realize just how far a dollar went, but at least that meant they had some time to find jobs. River's contact promised to have papers for them by the end of the week. "For Rory and Amelia Williams," Amy said firmly.

"You don't have to do this," Rory whispered to her.

"I want to," she said. "It's only you and me now. Besides, more trouble than it's worth, otherwise, in this day and age. Let everyone know we belong together. Don't worry, we're still Ponds on the inside." 

Rory squeezed her hand.

Amy bought knee-length dresses and Rory found trousers that didn't show the outlines of his legs. Amy teased him about baggy trousers and his broad-shouldered suit until he blushed, but he was laughing too. 

"You look like you tried to make American football pads out of a cardboard box," she told him.

"I know," he said with resignation. "But they're all so wide. Nobody pays attention to me when I'm narrow - I had to shout just to get the shopkeeper to notice me. Stop laughing. It definitely wasn't that funny. Come on, it really wasn't."

Rory asked after hospitals - harder with no internet and no Yellow Pages, but Amy was certain it wouldn't be long until someone was begging him to come and work for them. 

"Honestly, I'm not sure I'll have a clue," he told her, a crease of worry between his eyes. "It isn't as if they're wired to the gills like everywhere else I've worked. They're barely starting to get in antibiotics. Anything else, forget it. I'm lucky I ended up in an era where they have anaesthesia and medicine at all."

Amy listened and said all the right things, but she knew they'd take him, even without his license. Technology or no, Rory was a damn good nurse. He was good with people. He was born to it, couldn't help it. Sooner or later, someone would realize it and snap him up.

They got dinner from the deli on the corner and listened to the radio. It was strange, to be so cut off from the world - the nightly news mentioned Europe, but there was no BBC at their fingertips. The radio was nice, though. It felt like playing at history, like those roleplayers she'd heard about in the old villages. They did the washing up and went to bed and were asleep almost at once.

The second day was harder, and the third even worse. The fun of their displacement wore off. It was culture shock, only worse: there weren't any tastes of home they could use to stave off the ache, no expatriates' shop full of Ready Brek and pre-packaged curry. They were cut off completely from the life they'd known. "War of the Worlds" on the radio was the closest they got.

"Aww, bless," Amy said, curled up in Rory's arms on the sofa, listening to Orson Welles, people shouting in streets. "Remember when the Daleks will have tried to take over London with a robot scientist?"

"Must have been one of the times I wasn't there," Rory said dryly.

"Oh," Amy said. "Right. Well. Remember all the real alien invasions, eh?"

"Every one of them," he said. "Remember the Dalek asylum? That was the real thing."

"And the pirates," Amy said. "And Demon's Run."

"I would have thought that River would have been around by now," Rory mused.

"She'll come when she can," Amy said. "I'm sure she's a bit busy. The Doctor shouldn't travel alone."

"She has got a time machine, though," Rory reminded her. "Her vortex thingy."

"Yeah." Amy thought about it. "Probably a rough landing with all the time turbulence. She'll come. She's our daughter. She'll come."

"I'm sure she will," Rory said, and to his credit, only sounded a little troubled.

Amy lay awake for a long time that night. She gazed out the window, willing there to be a crackle of sparks, a halo of hair, the scent of ozone, River's low chuckle. But there was only the streetlight, steady, and the noise of the street. 

She dreamed of sitting on her little case in the garden, staring at the sky as cold nipped at her fingers and toes. Waiting and waiting until a raggedy man took her by the hand and told her that everything would be all right. Rory spoke in his sleep, waking her with a choppy phrase in Latin, and she pressed her shoulders to his and didn't dream any more.

\+ + + + 

Weeks passed, and then months. The city froze, wind whipping down the streets until Amy had to duck into the shelter of an alleyway. She was miserable for a time. Rory was working, of course; he'd gotten a job the second week, because he had a calling and she didn't. She drifted from one thing to another, tried her hand at being a secretary, tried her hand at modeling, but her personality was all wrong for the one and her look all wrong for the other, for now. She tried writing, but the magazines sneered at her. It was difficult to write travel pieces anyway, when everything she'd visited had either crumbled to dust or wouldn't exist for at least fifty years. 

There were days that all she did was take the subway to Central Park and walk in endless circles under the trees and over the bridges, her arms crossed over her chest. River hadn't come and Amy missed her ferociously. She was certain that River would come, one day. It wasn't a surprise that she was delayed - the Angels had made an absolute mess of time, and the Doctor would be even worse than usual after everything.

God, she missed the Doctor. Her raggedy man seemed farther away than ever. Her very best friend in all the universe and she'd never see him again. No matter how much she scanned the skies, there would never be a TARDIS spiraling down. She wiped away tears furiously and crossed her arms harder, hugging herself tight. 

"Get over yourself, Pond," she said to herself. "At least you didn't get your neck broken. That's more than Angel Bob can say."

The wind whipped past her, carrying a curling drift of leaves, and for just a moment, she thought she heard a far-away whooshing. She shivered and pushed her hair out of her eyes. It took knish and a cup of coffee to warm her, and then she went to buy a typewriter, tapping out funny little messages until she found one that clicked and jangled in the right way. Carrying the thing up five flights of stairs was rough, but she had an immense sense of accomplishment just from wrestling it onto the table. She sat down right away and started writing. 

Eventually, it got easier. It became less like playacting and more like life. They made coffee on the stove and boiled water for tea in the electric kettle. Rory worked and Amy wrote her book, tapping away on her typewriter. At least she knew it would be published, because it had been published. She'd read it, so she had to have written it. River wasn't around to do it, and anyway, if she showed up with a manuscript, Amy could always do the next bit in the series. 

It was a waiting game. But she was good at waiting, and good at making things happen, and she had this in the bag. The worst bit was having to type up all the bits that had made the Doctor say "Yowza" - it was too strange to think that way about her little girl, and too painful to think about the Doctor.

\+ + + + 

The wind howled through the alleys all winter, but Amy and Rory were warm enough. They drank a lot of tea and Rory got a recipe for chicken soup from one of his grateful patients. He made it one weekend and it was the best thing either of them had ever tasted. It wasn't really worse than any other winter, seemingly endless grey days that looked nearly the same in 1939 as they had in 2012. In the spring, the girl in 6A, whose name was Sophie, got married to a handsome soldier. Amy and Rory wished them well and bought them a toaster. Two months later, Sophie was clearly pregnant, her fingers pressed to her mouth every morning as she went to work. Rory promised her a baby sweater when things got colder. Without television or video games, he'd become quite the knitter. 

"Should we tell them?" Amy asked that night, listening to the news on the radio.

"They'll know soon enough," Rory said. "Everyone knows. They just don't want to talk about it." 

"Still," Amy said.

"No spoilers," Rory reminded her.

"God, where _is_ River?" Amy asked. 

"It's always so nice to be needed," River said, stepping out of the kitchen.

"River!" Amy shrieked, jumping out of her armchair. She half-tackled River, who caught her with open arms. They held onto each other tightly, squeezing until their bones ached.

"Hello, Mum," River said warmly. "Hello, Dad."

"Hello, River," Rory said, coming over for a hug. "How've you been?"

"Oh, surviving," River said, a twinkle in her eye. "More or less."

"Sit down, sit down," said Amy, fluttering around the flat. "Do you want tea?"

"Tea would be marvelous," River said, dropping onto the couch. 

"Tell us absolutely everything," Amy said. 

"The Doctor sends his love," River told them. "He wished he could come, but it's all too complicated. The TARDIS would never land here, and I wouldn't dare bring him. It's too much."

"We knew that," Rory said, looking at Amy with a hint of apprehension in his eyes. She gazed back at him, firm and level. 

"We did know that," she agreed. "It's too bad."

"I'm afraid I can't see any way clear to getting you back," River said. "The angels would never stop hunting you. But you knew that already too." She accepted a cup of tea and breathed in the steam. "My brave parents. How are you holding up?"

"Surviving," Rory said. "More or less." He glanced at Amy. "We get along all right. I'm working at the hospital. It's a little primitive, but not bad."

"I'm working on a novel," Amy declared, perching on the arm of the sofa with her own cup of tea. "And that's not a spoiler."

"No," River said, amused. "I look forward to reading it. It was quite good, as I recall."

"I think I'll write another one after this," Amy said. "Melody Malone is much too interesting to be a one-shot character."

"I always thought so," River said. "Never fear, Mummy dear. I'll keep you well-supplied with story material."

"I've got a few ideas of my own as well," Amy said proudly. River smiled at her. 

"I'm sure you do." She yawned. "Sorry. I've been working on a project for the university for the last few weeks. It's been good, but a bit exhausting."

"Not traveling with the Doctor, then?" Rory asked.

"Some of the time," River said. "But I have my own life as well. It's better that way."

Rory nodded. "I can see that."

"He misses you," River said softly. "He misses you desperately. He doesn't talk about it much, but it wouldn't take a genius to see it, and he spent ages beating himself up over it, trying to find a way to make it right. He's incredibly sorry."

"We're fine," Amy said, clutching her cup of tea. The heat of it beat through her bones; she felt the pulse of her blood painfully in her fingers. "Don't worry about us."

"Of course he worries," River said. "And so do I. It's lonely, being caught out of your own time. At least I could escape from the Stormcage. There's no getting away from the angels. Believe me - I've spent ages trying to work out any solution, anything at all. I haven't found any way that will work."

"We're all right," Amy said, reaching for River's hand and squeezing it gently. "Really." She looked over at Rory and smiled. "It's an adventure."

"The inimitable Ponds," River said, smiling, but her eyes were still worried. 

"We'll tell him so ourselves," Amy said. "I promised him an afterword."

"We should tell your parents," Rory said suddenly. "River, could you tell them, or take them a letter?"

"Of course," River said. 

"It would probably be better if they think we're dead," Amy said, her heart aching but her voice nearly steady. "They never believed in the Doctor."

"Oh, my dear little mother," River said warmly. "I'm not sure anybody ever believed the way that you did." She squeezed Amy's hand. "You always had the faith that could move mountains and remake a universe from its foundations."

Amy felt her smile wavering, weighed down by the tears that prickled in her eyes. She took a deep breath. "Enough about that," she said briskly. "Tell us everything. What have you been up to?"

"Well!" River began, and told them a hundred stories about a hundred worlds, and they soaked up every moment of it.

\+ + + + 

Near the end of the year, Amy sold her book, which wasn't much of a surprise, but they immediately asked her for another one, which was a bit more surprising, and then they asked her to write children's books, and the delight all of that brought her was the most surprising of all. 

"What I wouldn't give for a laptop and a coffee shop," she said to Rory as he was dressing for work. 

"We'll live long enough to see that," he said, kissing her cheek.

"Morbid much?" she asked. "Are you sure you're not Scottish?"

"It's your good influence," he told her. "I haven't lived with you all these years without picking up a little something."

"Be off with you," she said comfortably. 

He kissed her again and left. Amy opened the window and poured herself some more tea. She sat down at her typewriter and re-read the last few pages.

"All right," she said to herself. "Let's do this."

The racket of the keys filled the apartment, but she was too deep in the story to notice.

\+ + + + 

It had been a few years, but they'd settled into a comfortable routine. Rory went to the hospital; Amy typed away at home and picked up dinner from the deli. River popped in every once in a while and they stayed up until all hours talking. They visited friends and took walks in the park. Amy had started wearing longer dresses and putting her hair up. The twenty-first century seemed a lifetime ago. She felt impossibly older than she had been when they'd come here. Every month seemed to steady and settle her in a way she'd always thought she'd hate. But then, she'd done at least three lifetimes' worth of traveling. She'd seen the universe. Maybe it was just time she anchored herself permanently. And Rory was happy, busy and happy, and that delighted her. 

Sophie-next-door's oldest daughter was nearly seven and the younger one was five. They both worshiped Amy, who was amused by their attention. They begged to plait her hair, which she'd grown out. She surprised herself by letting them. When Rory came home, all four of them were giggling: Sophie and Amy sitting on the floor and the girls on the couch, braiding determinedly.

"I wish," Amy said when they'd gone home and it was just her and Rory again. 

"Hmm?" he said. 

"Nothing," she told him. "I just wish sometimes that they hadn't taken Melody."

"Me too," Rory said. "But then again, it all turned out all right. We couldn't have raised her to be who she is."

"No, I'm a terrible shot," Amy said, laughing a little. "And I love her just the way she is, our River. But."

"I know," he said. They sat in silence for a moment. Rory took her hand. 

"Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone," she said, dashing tears from her eyes with her other hand. 

"We could adopt," Rory offered. 

"Yeah," Amy said. "Let's do that."

"What, now?" Rory asked, startled.

"Not this minute," she said, squeezing his hand. "But when we find the right baby. What do you say, Centurion? Think you could handle parenting a child who isn't an intergalactic renegade who's usually older than you?"

"Might be a nice change," he said. "If only because I never get to use the dad voice on her. Can you imagine? She'd probably just knock me out for mercy's sake."

"That's one major life decision sorted, then," Amy announced, and they smiled at each other.

\+ + + +

The war began, at least in Europe. The voices on the radio were more urgent, but Amy and Rory felt insulated. 

"So weird, to think of it happening," Rory said. "I keep thinking the air raid sirens will go any minute."

"At least you're not in the thick of it this time around," Amy reminded him.

"This is better," he agreed. "I mean, in a way. But knowing what to come makes the waiting worse."

The months passed and the seasons turned. The city got more and more tense, anticipating the blow to come, the moment of no return. America joining the war was nearly a relief. Amy and Rory made the best of their rations, sharing a bit of sugar now and then with Sophie's girls. Eventually Sophie's handsome husband got called up, and when he came back, he was quieter, a little slower. He walked his girls to school in the morning, leaning a little on a cane when it got colder. Amy heard him walk them home in the afternoons and smiled as she wrote a kindly landlord with a bit of a limp into her latest book.

\+ + + + 

In the fall of 1945, the war ended and the city exploded with joy. It seemed Amy couldn't walk to the corner shop without encountering a dozen young starry-eyed couples. Everything had a new swagger and the gleam of victory. It was only natural that one day Sophie knocked on Amy's door to say that her sister's daughter, who was sixteen, had gotten swept up in the glory of it all, but she was planning on going to teaching college and there was no way she could keep the baby.

"Yes," Amy said even before Sophie had finished talking. "Absolutely yes." 

"You don't want to talk to Mister Williams about it?" Sophie asked. She was wringing her hands in her lap. 

Amy waved her off. "He'll be beside himself." 

And he was, sweeping Amy up and twirling her around in the air until she slapped at him playfully.

"Put me down! We're proper grownups. For god's sake, I'm over forty. You can't just hurl me around," she said. 

"Who says?" he asked, his eyes alight, but he set her down and kissed her soundly. 

"Now what?" she asked, laughing. 

"Let's buy a house," he said. "Or at least someplace with a yard."

Amy squinted at him. "I knew this would happen one day."

"What?" he asked.

"You want a bit of earth to dig in, don't you?" she teased. "Going to start carrying around gardening tools? I can't say I wasn't warned."

"The spare room's fine for a nursery, but we'll want a little more room later," he argued, wrapping his arms around her.

"I'm only joking," she said. "Pity, though, our London house would have been perfect."

"We'll make this one perfect," Rory promised.

\+ + + +

The six months until they could hold their son were the longest of Amy's life. She wrote at a frantic speed, trying to keep herself busy. Sophie offered to bring over the cot her girls had used, retrieved from another of the neighbors. Amy was touched, but she'd found one in an antique store that reminded her of the Doctor's, and it was already installed in the little nursery.

"River hasn't been by for a while," Rory said as he sanded the cot, about to give it a fresh coat of paint.

"No, she hasn't," Amy agreed. "I suppose we're due for a visit."

"It'll be interesting," Rory said. "I wonder if she'll come before the baby does."

"How are we going to introduce them?" Amy asked. "'Hello, River, come and meet your brother'?"

Rory shrugged. "We're a nontraditional family."

"You can say that again," Amy said. 

"I'm sure I'll say it quite frequently," Rory said.

Amy sat down suddenly in a rocking chair. "Rory."

"Yeah," he said, rubbing at the wood with the sandpaper.

"We're doing this the right way, aren't we?" she asked. "We're doing something good, and we're not doing it all wrong?"

"It feels right to me," he said. "Does it feel right to you?"

"I want it so badly," Amy told him. "But I'm more than a little terrified I'm going to ruin everything."

Rory put down the sandpaper and knelt in front of her. "You could never ruin anything. Hey. Look at me. You're going to be a terrific mum. I mean, you already are as best as anyone could be in our situation, but this is going to be easier than that. I promise."

She smiled at him. "You always say the right thing."

"I had a lot of practice saying some of the wrong things," he reminded her.

"Are we too old to be parents?" she asked.

"Nah," he said. "Plenty of people older than us are parents."

She narrowed her eyes. "To newborns?"

"Not all of them," he said, looking away and then back at her face. "But trust me when I say we will be good at this."

"Okay," she said. 

"Okay?"

"You and me," she said. "And baby makes three, yeah?"

"Yeah," he said, and kissed her.

\+ + + + 

Amy had been wrong: the six months of waiting were nothing compared to the hours at the hospital, pacing the waiting room. She strained for any echo or half-heard yelp from the maternity ward. At least Rory could bring her information. She thought she would jump out of her skin. It was worse than wedding jitters, worse than her restless heart. 

God, she wished River and the Doctor were there. The Doctor would distract her with vague allusions to his own days as a parent and then refuse to elaborate and River would quell his foolishness with a look and somehow manage to be reassuring. Amy wished for her parents too, and Brian - they'd be at the completely wrong place in their timeline to actually comfort her, but she missed them all the same. She was going to wear a blister on her heel before the night was over. 

It seemed like ten lifetimes before Rory came through the doors with a swaddled bundle in his arms.

"Amelia Williams," he said, "come and meet your handsome, healthy son."

"Give him to me," Amy said urgently, and Rory gently settled their boy in the curve of her arm. Amy pulled back the blanket with one fingertip, gazing at his red, squashed, impossibly beautiful face. 

"And they lived happily ever after," she whispered.

"Near as," Rory said, sliding his arms around her, and the two of them gazed into their son's face.


End file.
